Tippis

Then you'd have several options, a bit depending on how it's implemented. You could just not run the mission (or ask the server manager not to). Maybe set up a rotating schedule between symmetric and asymmetric dogfighting setups. If it's slot-bound — and that would probably be how I'd implement it — you could pick a slot that gave you the advantage or handicap you'd prefer for yourself. Or it could be done on a zone level, so you could choose to stay in (or out of) the zone where the assistance is in effect according to preference. There are some O(N²) scaling issues here that would make you want to keep it a pretty limited affair either way. Or, ultimately, just pick a different server and/or play with people you know who you can trust to honour a “fair fight” according to how you all agree to define one of those. …but of course, those are mostly hypotheticals. Just because it can be done doesn't mean its done a lot, or even at all, so it's really more of of the opposite problem. You'd have to actively search for, or set up for yourself, a server where such assistance was in effect. It would probably be something you'd build a small community around or at least have as a special-occasion event. This is why it's already not causing any issues even if it's technically possible to do.

Not really. It can be done already, and it's already not causing any problems.

It would certainly be a lot more useful and beneficial if it were.

The purpose of AAR aids has been explained extensively. So your purposeless examples (which, again, the game can already provide) are not analogous to the purposeful addition of AAR helpers (which the game currently can't do). Then don't bring need up as an argument. If “need” was somehow a determining factor in what should be done to DCS, then nothing would ever be added. Or changed. Or fixed. It's a vapid argument. Argument from incredulity, huh? No, it was a real one. You see, real simulators come in a whole assortment of classes for different purposes and with different demands on fidelity, and they can all be set up to make the pilot experience situations of higher or lower difficulty. That's kind of the point of having them. It certainly changes the way you bomb when you can just dump 15× the number of bombs to get your hit in, as opposed to only getting one chance per pass… Unlimited fuel, on the other hand, doesn't change how you AAR other than to potentially make it impossible. Again, that's just an argument from incredulity. Meanwhile, we know for a fact that being shown things helps. Being able to break a task down into smaller bits helps. Being able to gradually increase difficulty helps. Negative training happens even more when you try to learn on your own without guidance. These are not beliefs. As for the F-5, yes, its early state made you doubt whether it had rubber on its wheels or something far more fruity. It was quite fun, in it own way. There's very little so suggest that this is the case. And even if it were, again, we're talking about functionality that is fully in line with what the game is supposed to provide. If it takes time, so what? It's time spent on making the game do what it's supposed to.

Features that help players of all skill levels, down to full on hand-holding, are also core parts of DCS. The OP is asking for an upgrade to that core. And the thing about training wheels is that they actually help, if set correctly. Practising without them is good, but that comes after practising with them. I take it you weren't a fan of (or never experienced) the early days of the F-5 module?

Helping people learn AAR. Making AAR available to a more casual playstyle and users of varying levels of experience and training. You didn't answer the question. What purpose would those serve? But creating AAR helpers can't, and that's what was the point of comparison. So ED should no longer create any add-ons? After all, they aren't needed either. By what measure aren't they worth implementing? According to a poll that's apparently popular to quote, a large portion of players would gain something from it, making it worth-while by very definition. It would create vastly less negative learning compared to players winging it with no help or guidance to teach them to do it properly. The specifics aren't actually relevant, and that wasn't the question — now you're just moving the goalposts. That said, the one I went in certainly could. Otherwise people would have crashed a whole lot more when they tried to land… it really isn't. The key difference is that while unlimited ammo helps you learn bombing, unlimited fuel has no impact on learning AAR (other than to potentially make it impossible to do at all).

What purpose would those serve? (Coincidentally, those can all be made in the game already…). ED should devote dev time to create the kinds of feature they list in the product description. Features such as “both hardcore realistic and casual gameplay modes and options”, “a more relaxed gameplay to suit the user and his particular level of experience and training” and the functionality needed to “hand hold users from novice pilot all the way to the most advanced and sophisticated operator.” Maybe, but again, those things can actually be done already and unlike what the OP is asking for, they cover areas that already have helpers. AAR has none. So it makes a lot of sense to start filling in the game since that's fully to be expected from a game that advertises itself as having exactly that kind of functionality. Sure there are. Plenty have been listed. At no point has anyone been able to demonstrate any fault with them. We've had ideas for aids to help learn proper positioning, aids to help learn proper control, aids to help learn sight picture, aids to help learn procedure. All of those make all the sense in the world. In simulators where you can layer in the difficulty.

Nope. Objectively false.

…except for aiding with AAR. So there's no coherent, cogent, or rational reason not to implement those as well since that's fully in line with what DCS is supposed to offer. When the OP comes and asks for gamplay aids for AAR, the only sensible response is “yes, of course — it's strange that we don't have those already.” No. No such choice exits in this case because no such aids exist for this activity.

Oh god yes, that would be so useful. I think the problem is one of where the processing happens and where the information goes. The arguments work for “player” aircraft because the player is also on the computer that has access to and that continuously processes those inputs and arguments. The server, on the other hand, has no idea what goes on inside a “client” aircraft — all that processing happens on the client's side and the results (rather than the underlying data) are sent to the server. To make the whole thing work, we'd either need to be able to run scripts client-side and have them report back to the server in some way, or a lot more processing and messaging would have to happen on the server end. I suspect the latter would be prohibitively expensive from a performance perspective, and the former would require some breakage of the sandbox and security model. It can probably be done, but I can see some people worrying about that newly-poked hole. Or maybe there could be some oddball half-measure where you can selectively pick certain arguments to be passed on to the server to be processed there, but with the full awareness on the mission designer's side that they've now built a mission that requires more processing and bandwidth on both the server and the client end. But at least you'd be able to very selectively pick exactly and only the parameters you'd be interested in monitoring in your scripting.

I have some vague recollection that they issued refunds in relation to some early and particularly botched EA release, but yeah, outside of Steam and their usual refund window, you're not going to have much luck with that.

Yes. He wanted help. In the the very next sentence: “it's an area I would like some assistance with until I'm able to take it myself. ” He is quite literally asking for help. He was asking for help of a kind that is distinctly missing from the game. He was even self-aware and self-deprecating enough to understand that it may be a niche need. But what he didn't need and wasn't asking for is what the game already offers, and that was the only thing suggested as help — the very thing that made him ask for this other kind of help to begin with. Could you object to his tone? Sure. But that doesn't take away from the simple fact that he asked for help in the ofrm of a feature, and was only offered help in the form of the frustration he had said from the start the he wasn't asking for. Irrespective of the initial tone, though, is it any surprising that frustration set in when everyone started giving him “help” of the exact type he didn't want from the get go? When he's effectively told “the thing you want is bad, do the thing you don't want or get out”?

And there you go. “That ilk.” That's what I'm talking about. He wanted help. It was just very clear from the start that it wasn't the kind he was then persistently offered. So of course he rejected the type of help he didn't want — that's why asked for a different kind, after all. Now go back and watch the chronology of that exchange. Note who brought it up and in what context…

There's the whole slew of posts telling the OP what he wants, eg. that he doesn't actually want to play DCS; that he should go elsewhere; that he's wasting his time. Plenty of gatekeeping because he wished for something that has been discussed plenty, with plenty of reasoning why it would do all kinds of good and very little reasons why it would be bad. And yes, there was quite a bit of hostility in all of that. There's always quite a bit of hostility in the opposition to improvements to this part of the game. The OP asked for a feature. Instead of discussing the pros and cons of that feature, you started feeding him something he didn't ask for. He rejected that offer because it had no bearing on what he asked for. It's not the bluntness that is the hazing — it's the insistence that new players must struggle through the same lack of features, the same anti-learning environment, the same unnecessary impossibility of direction as the old-timers. And that any suggestion that this situation could be improved is derided as “turning DCS into an arcade game” (or some variation thereof). “The ambition is to hand hold users from novice pilot all the way to the most advanced and sophisticated operator” is how ED themselves describe DCS. “Both hardcore realistic and casual gameplay modes and options available” is listed as a key part of the feature set. It is “designed also to offer a more relaxed gameplay to suit the user and his particular level of experience and training. ” In other words, the goal of the whole damn simulation is to not fall into that trap of tradition, but to improve and make the kind of accommodations to novices that the OP is asking for so that the bad old ways ultimately go away. There's literally no reason to hold up the “I did it the hard way, so you can too” (implied: so you should too… in fact, in some cases it's not even implied, but explicitly stated) as some kind of ideal to maintain, and that adding helper features somehow betrays the core idea of the game. In actuality, adding such features is fully in line with what the game is supposed to be, and lacking them means we still have some ways to go. Making DCS better by adding helper features does not turn DCS into an arcade game — it turns DCS into what DCS is ultimately meant to be.

Ooh! Can you show me? I want to see it confirmed as well.

Yes it can. Depending on exactly how literal you are, it might need some less common hardware, but it's still entirely possible. If someone literally took your hand IRL, that wouldn't be good teaching and the instructor would probably be grounded if not fired outright. They have dual controls for a reason. As for demonstrating the control inputs, guess what? That can be done as well. In fact, that functionality is not just feasible — it's already in the game. …and since visual and auditory (and to some extent physical) feedback are the only options, there should be a focus on enhancing how those visuals, those audio cues, and that physical feedback can be improved to enhance the learning experience. Just like how you probably had someone help you when you learned to ride a bike — maybe they even told you why you had to do the things that you were meant to do. Helping helps. Teaching helps. Everything helps and forcing the poor person to just learn on their own without any kind of guidance is the worst and most inefficient way imaginable to impart and improve skills. Then I will simply state that, if memory serves me correctly, the majority of users asking for these things discuss them in the context of providing helper tools that can be used to build missions to teach AAR. Some may have chimed in how this would help them getting the actual refuelling done with less effort and that this was the entire goal, but they were minority voices in the debate. Also, being all accusatory and looking down your nose at the people who want to see the game improve just screams of elitism, snobbery, failure to teach, and lack of imagination. See how that works? And unlike making the game better and striving towards the kind of hand-holding that is a key feature of the game, ED can't really fix that kind of negativity… Well, mostly not at least. LMAO no. This community is by far the most anti-newbie I've ever encountered. Every single time someone suggests improvements that would make new players' lives and learning progression easier, they get drowned in abuse and accusations and vitriol. There is plenty of knowledge and experience out there, but unless you're willing to go through the traditional hazing of old, you are not worthy and need to go somewhere else — that is the one consistent message of naysaying and gatekeeping that they face if they just wander in. Some are lucky enough to come in via established communities, but they get their help there, not from the wider community as a whole. It's also in these smaller communities you find the support for these kinds of features, because they understand what's missing to make it easier to teach those newbies. They have to deal with the gaps in the feature set on a daily basis.

So are the training wheels we cite as various methods of making AAR easier and exist on a graduated scale. If the OP wants them to stay on, then that's his choice and it affects no-one. His keeping them on isn't a reason to not implement those helpers. Citation needed. Only in the sense that there is no reason to argue against hose wishes. Again, just because they want to use helpers in a specific way doesn't mean there's no reason to implement them or to discuss various ideas for implementation. The debate isn't squashed at all — it just shifts to how best to implement those helpers so as to make them as broadly useful as possible. …to the question of whether people “want it badly.” There is no “against”. That's you twisting the words in the poll. No simply means no to that question. The “no” column does not provide evidence for your claim that people don't want it. Just that they don't want it badly. Interpreting “no” as a strict “do not want it at all” is also twisting the words in the poll. This is why you really need to be more careful when you employ your standard tactic of trying to use polls as evidence for your stance: because they invariable prove you wrong, because you invariably fail to read what the poll actually asks and what the answers say in relation to that question.

The poll OP makes the question very clear and explicit: “how many of you want it badly”. The only further clarification is “the mode in question would be optional.” No further interpretation is needed. It's a count of “want”, not a pro-contra. There is no “against”. They don't matter if enough people do want it. And 36% is more than enough to clear that bar.

Please highlight in these images where it says “against”: The point is, he's arguing that 36% of people being strongly in favour of a feature means that it shouldn't be in the game. In another post, he's posting a claim that a mere 10% use MP. Combine the two and his stance on spending any dev resources on MP going forward should be clear. He's not asking for it, no. But he should.

Nope. “No” means “no”. The question is “how many of you want it badly.” All other interpretations are your own inventions and have zero basis in reality. Irrelevant. 36% is enough to make it a viable option to develop — enough people will use it. And remember, it's 36% who want it badly. Among the 64% who don't want it badly, you're quite likely to find those who only want it a little. Those who don't know but who'd probably end up enjoying the benefits, directly or indirectly. Those who don't care one way or another. And maybe even a very tiny and insignificant fraction who are actually against improving the game. But they don't matter if the number of people in favour is large enough. And at 36%, it certainly is. Incorrect. This is a poll to gauge interest in a feature. Second place, especially with such a huge number of supporters, means everyone wins. Well, except for those who are dead set against is, but they're irrelevant anyway. Or, if you like, how about we remove the Hornet from the game. I'm pretty sure that only a minority have it so therefore, since there are no points for second place, it's a waste of the developers' time. Right?

That's not what the poll is saying, though, now is it? It says that 36% want it badly. “Worth-while” is not the question. More than a third of the responders would clearly find it useful, which is a huge portion. The ones who don't want it badly don't really matter in relation to that.

Sure they can. By adding in tools and options to make things less of a needless grind, players can get more out of their available playtime. If it's about skill acquisition, then this translates into more skill for less time expenditure, which is a win for everyone. We're tool makers. We do this for that exact reason.

Funnily enough, those exist already on a level that would be comparable to what the OP is asking for. There's nothing to suggest anything of the kind. This is just something you dreamed up and it only “seems like it” in relation to your imagination. In the real world, where the rest of us exist, the existing flight models can take care of this fully. In fact, adding new flight models would go completely contrary to the whole idea. They can do it even better with helpers and more interfering. So why shouldn't those tools be implemented? Why should AAR be excluded from the ways in which DCS strives to fulfil its goal of hand-holding new players? Again, just because you can do it in the most stupid and grindy way imaginable doesn't mean a more intelligent and efficient method should not be implemented. In other words, the market for this kind of feature would be a full third of the player-base — more than any other feature in the game. That's not actually an argument against its implementation. It would literally be the most worth-while thing they could possibly spend their time on if that poll is representative. And if it's not, then it could be ∞:0 against and it would still not matter. See how that works? You keep falling into this trap of trying to use some very marginal majority poll result to suggest that something has no audience, when what those polls in fact show is that there is a huge number of people who do want it… and if that minority is large enough, it doesn't matter how many don't.

You don't. That's why unlimited fuel does not help. It's just some magical words that people try to use to make the scary topic go away. Because the whole point is that you don't want to pretend on either of those points. Unlimited fuel forces you to. That's why it's not a solution here either. Oh, and by that logic, let's remove all teen fighters from the game. You can just fly the TF-51 and pretend it's actually a Tomcat. Unlimtied ammo is also already in the game and requires no extra work. It contributes just as much, i.e. not at all. Ceasing all support and development on all teen fighters would not only require extra work, but would free up devs to do something else. And you could still pretend, right?

No, most games, sports and activities actually welcome new people and provide means to ease them into various technical aspects of whatever it is they're doing. They evolve and improve and don't force people to waste time just because it's traditional. Here, most such accommodations are met with pure vitriol and shouted down as “dumbing down” the game for no reason that the detractors can articulate.